Chinese Firm Sinovac Biotech’s COVID-19 Vaccine Triggers Quick Immune Response in Mid-Stage Trials

Sinovac Biotech Ltd.’s (Beijing, China) experimental COVID-19 vaccine CoronaVac triggered a quick immune response in preliminary trial results, although the level of antibodies produced was found to be lower in recovered COVID-19 patients.

China is currently conducting late-stage trials of CoronaVac and four other experimental vaccines in order to determine their effectiveness in preventing COVID-19, according to a report by Reuters. Sinovac has now published the results of Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials held in China that involved more than 700 participants in a peer-reviewed paper in medical journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

“Our findings show that CoronaVac is capable of inducing a quick antibody response within four weeks of immunization by giving two doses of the vaccine at a 14-day interval,” said Zhu Fengcai, one of the authors of the paper. “We believe that this makes the vaccine suitable for emergency use during the pandemic,” said Zhu in a statement along with the paper.

According to the researchers, the early to mid-stage trials of CoronaVac have not been designed to assess its efficacy, although they believe that the COVID-19 vaccine could provide sufficient protection, based on their experience with other vaccines and data from preclinical studies involving macaques. However, the results need to be interpreted with caution until Sinovac publishes the Phase 3 trial results of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine. Sinovac is currently conducting three Phase 3 trials in Indonesia, Brazil and Turkey, and their findings would be vital to determine if CoronaVac can generate an adequate immune response to provide protection from coronavirus infection.

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